Annals of Economic Bewilderment

Something hideous grows under the refrigerator where Grampa spilled his medicine & the cat got rid of a hairball, according to Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker.

This sort of lunatic paranoia—touched with populism, nativism, racism, and anti-intellectualism—has long been a feature of the fringe, especially during times of economic bewilderment. What is different now is the evolution of a new political organism, with paranoia as its animating principle. The town-meeting shouters may be the organism’s hands and feet, but its heart—also, Heaven help us, its brain—is a “conservative” media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News. The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful—they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians—but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism—the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.

HH goes on to review the Prez's speech (been a wk., what's the deal?) but we're struck w/ this notion of a new political organism, outside of accountability to party mechanisms (or elections) it's loudmouth leaders responsible only to their corporate masters, & then only for the production of ratings.

For one thing, it appeals to our anarcho-nihilistic nature. For another, how out of control can this get? We noticed the suits the politicians sported at the opening events on Friday were not quite the same as the audience's Mall★Wart ensembles. The herd is much likelier to follow in Glenn Beck's sneaker tracks, or to identify w/ Limbaugh & his chins, then to take orders from a Washingtonian whose loafers cost ten times what a pair of shorts & designer T-shirt run at the mall.

Promising as all that sounds, these people, if not old, are certainly middle-aged & in the way; how many of them will ever do anything beyond milling around in a herd in Washington, admiring each other's clever signs? And they won't be among us forever. How many Perot voters still walk the earth? So our hopes for a second civil war, to settle these questions once & for all, will no doubt end on the same rocks our other illusions & hopes have been dashed upon. Figures.

Pretend you didn't see any of this here.